For many years when a person has a medical condition which requires them to spend time in a hospital, skilled nursing facility, nursing home, convalescent facilities and the like, they frequently bring with them personal needed articles from home. There are only very few convenient places to put or store such items in a hospital room environment. When a small table next to the bed is provided, it is often cluttered with hospital food trays and other hospital related items which may be moved intentionally or unintentionally by any other hospital staff member at any time. Additionally, in today's hospital reality, a patient may move from one room to another with very short notice, in which case their personal belongings are liable to get misplaced during the move. Additionally, a person staying in the hospital may have items of personal value which they wish to have in close proximity to them. Although most hospitals have centrally located safes, there is no place for a patient confined to the bed to keep those articles safe and in immediate reach as they wish. In this situation usually the patient will use the nursing call light button, distract the CNA (certified nursing assistant), nurse or any other team member worker from doing other important medical duties which might be more crucial to the well being of other patients. Therefore, there has been a recognized need for many years, to provide convenient and safe bedside storage of those patient's necessities and amenities that is easy to reach or store while they are in the hospital.
For many years inventors and patients in the hospital have tried to come up with different solutions for this problem. Every generation has introduced different situations and conditions, using different type of beds and railings, different articles that appear as we move along with all the newer (and smaller) developed items. In recent years, our society uses certain items that have become not only convenient, but almost a necessity.
Today when a person has a medical problem which requires him or her to spend time in the hospital or a like, they frequently bring with them personal items such as cell phones, eye glasses, hearing aids, dentures, and the like. Today most of the patients have at least one of the above items, and most of the time more than one. These articles are a necessity for patients to be able to continue to function with their lives as normal as possible (to be able to chew and eat, hear, see, read and communicate with family, friends, doctors, and others). These things are not luxury items any more, but necessary for the daily activity of the patient. If any of these articles are lost during the patient's stay in the hospital, they can become very hard to replace in a timely manner. Any one of these items can easily cost a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars. If any of these articles are missing, this is going to be a devastating situation for the patient and the family.
The bed railing needs to have the ability to be at least in two positions: an up position when the patient lies down in the bed, and a down position when the patient gets in or out of the bed, or when the CNA or the nurse needs to change the linens or to have access to the upper body of the patient for a variety of needed treatments. When this happens, if all of the article caddy is inside the railing, close to the patient's reach as needed, it will be impossible to lower the rail in the way it was designed in the hospital beds today. None of the prior art have been able to address this issue.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide an improved patient article caddy for hospital beds of the type which is suspended from a patient bed railing. The present invention provides convenient and secured storage for miscellaneous articles that a patient might need to bring from home when admitted to the hospital. The ability of the article caddy to be in a position inside or outside of the hospital bed railing (depending on configuration of the railing) will address the main issues of safely storing the patient's articles at any position of the railing and the ability to move the railing to an up or down position without the article caddy being in the way or falling off the railing.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide an article caddy which is installed to the bed side railing in such a way that it does not slide away from the patient when the head end of the bed and the corresponding side railing of the hospital bed is raised.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide an article caddy which can easily be removed from one bed side railing and reinstalled on another bed side railing for easy transfer along with the patient and provide a low cost, disposable article caddy.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide an article caddy which can easily store articles such as cell phone, eyeglasses, or hearing aids, and allow the articles to be picked up with the use of only one hand.